There are few city names that ring a bell with esports fans all over the globe the way that Katowice does. Attracting a staggering 173,000 visitors in attendance last year, alongside millions of online viewers, IEM Katowice is a standout event in the annual esports calendar. Katowice is worth it, no matter if it’s for the fans, players, teams, or brands. One aspect that’s rarely talked about, however, is the event’s value for the city of Katowice itself.

While welcoming thousands and thousands of guests is certainly a logistical challenge for the tournament organizer, ESL, and might be nerve-racking for the city’s roughly 300,000 inhabitants—in the light of an estimated advertising value of €22 million (approx. $27 million), city officials probably draw a positive conclusion, however.

Keep in mind, before ESL and Intel ran the first event in Katowice in 2013, the IEM series, one of the longest-standing pro gaming circuits, had been hosted in cities like New York, Shanghai, Singapore, or Taipei—in other words: well-known megacities with populations in the millions. Katowice, in comparison, is just a village. Now, five years later the city’s name is wedded to esports like Wimbledon (London) is to tennis. To a large extent, that’s a result of the Intel Extreme Masters.

Even by simple measures like Google Trends, IEM’s impact on the city’s popularity is visible.

That’s not explaining how the city of Katowice earned an estimated €22 million in advertising value thanks to the Intel Extreme Masters, of course.

Advertising Value Equivalency and How It Is Measured

In public relations, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) or simply “ad value” refers to the cost of buying the space taken up by a piece of media coverage, had that coverage been an advertisement. In the case of a print medium, the ad value is traditionally calculated by measuring column inches, in case of, say, TV broadcasts it’s seconds shown up on screen. For online, the ad value is typically calculated using audience metrics, and so on and so forth. These figures are then multiplied with the respective medium’s advertising rates—and voilà: an ad or PR campaign is financially quantified.

Obviously, in the case of IEM and Katowice, things get a little more complicated. It’s easy to imagine how difficult it must be to try and track every bit of news piece written and every second of TV or online video content created about the event, and we haven’t even started speaking about social media mentions. Aside of that, the ad value method is criticized for a lot of reasons. It’s not taken into account if the press is negative, for example. Likewise, when a brand is mentioned alongside several of its competitors, it’s unclear what really sticks with the reader. And there’s the lack of standardization when it comes to the calculation as well as the inaccuracy and or bias of the audience numbers used.

Taking all things into consideration, an advertising value of €22 million sounds impressive, but could as well be marketing buzz. On that note, the €22 million figure stems from an Austrian tourism magazine, where it’s presented without further clarification regarding its origin.

The Esports Observer reached out to the city of Katowice and its tourism board, but didn’t receive a response in time. TEO neither received a response from the Austrian tourism magazine that published the figure. ESL, however, did respond to our press inquiry. A company spokesperson stated it had never heard of that figure before and elaborated: “We didn’t supply it or otherwise released it.”

Is it possible the number is calculated correctly and presents a valid valuation? Yes, it is. But it’s also not a stretch to say it could be completely off. That said, the €22 million in advertising value should certainly be taken with a grain of salt.

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